Women and Democracy - promoting Gender Equality through Nordic-Baltic co-operation

Intervention by Laila Dåvøy

Minister of Children and Family Affairs, Norway

Women and Democracy – promoting Gender Equality through Nordic-Baltic co-operation

N ordic-Baltic network of policewomen

Oslo, 15-16 September 2003

Dear colleagues and friends,

It is a great pleasure for me to be here and meet you all. The baltic countries have experienced great changes in the past decade. Important changes are taking place as democracy is reinstalled and developed. There are many challenges to adress. Such as developing a police force committed to democratic values, and sensitive to the needs and the integrity of the women and men it is set to serve. You are part of this process.

Democracy is a rewarding but a painstaking process. “All of this” means:

Also every woman!

Norway introduced parliamentary rule in 1884, but the women were not included. It took a long and hard fight before Norwegian women won the right to vote and to stand for election, in 1913. Norway was one of the first countries in Europe to give voting rights to women. Representative democracy, however, is about more than formal rights.

It took another more than 70+ years before women reached a critical mass in political life. The present Government consists of 8 women and 11 men. Women politicians also gain access to new and former male-dominated policy domains. One esample is that my colleague in the Ministry of Defence is a woman. A number of women have been at the head of the Ministry of Justice and the Police over the last two decades, my colleague Odd Einar Dørum is almost an exception in that sense. More importantly, the appointment of Ingelin Killengren (who welcomed you) as the National Police Commissioner, was a true milestone for gender equality and parity democracy.

The political arena is a field where we have seen success and we know why. We have combined legal measures with awareness-raising campaigns and our work has been based on updated statistics and research.

Campaigns have proved important to create awareness, to mobilise women and to unite women as a political force to be reckoned with. However quotas for women may have been an even more important measure.

Some political parties adopted quota provisions (on a voluntary basis) as early as in the mid 1970s. This improved the situation, but did not make any fundamental changes to women’s political representation.

Later, in 1988, we got amendments to the Gender Equality Act (of 1979) which obliges all publicly appointed boards and committees to include minimum 40 per cent of either sex. The Act is not binding on the political parties. But it did set a new standard. In the course of the 1980s all but one of the major political parties in Norway adopted, on a voluntary basis, quotas for women.

The Government has decided that the time is ripe to extend the use of quotas into the private sector. It is a law bill in the Parliament proposing legal changes that will give us at least 40 percent of either sex in the board rooms of our state owned and our largest private companies by 2005.

The public appointed committees has since 1988 improved their female representation, and is today 42 percent. Women’s representation in the Parliament is 37 percent and women elected at the municipal level were 34 percent at the election in 1999.

As you might know, we had a new local election yesterday.

The figures of the election yesterday (15 sept)???? we don`t know yet. But we do know that only 15% women were nominated at the top of the voting lists this year. This is a big concern for me being the equality min

I had personally a meeting two weeks ago with representatives for the women groups from political parties. We discussed strategies for further improvements for elections in the future.

In Norway, the feminist movement of the 1970s and the women’s interest groups in the 1980s have had a political impact. They have also been important arenas to teach women organisational and lobbying skills. All the way, there has been a strong coalition between grass-root women's organisations and women politicians up to the highest levels. I personally strongly believe in value of women’s networking both nationally and across boarders.

My responsibility as a Minister is the Ministry of Children and Family Affairs. One of our important tasks is the responsibility for coordinating the government policy for gender equality. Our job is to develop legislative and positive action measures. We also co-ordinate the process of gender mainstreaming, to ensure that all Government policies are mobilised for gender equality.

We also have other institutions to promote gender equality. We have the Gender Equality Ombud and we have a Gender Equality Centre. The Ombud implements the Gender Equality Act. The law is an essential tool in our gender equality work. Our Gender Equality Act covers in principle all areas of economic and social life. The Act aims specifically to improve the status of women. The law have a special clause which does also benefit men and children. The intention of this clause is to increase the number of men who work directly with children, in child-care, child welfare and in school. We see it as important to have more men into the female dominated and nursing sectors. I will later comment on the importance of more women in male dominated occupations.

Most women in Norway are in paid employment. Paid parental leave and the development of child-care facilities are important factors to explain the combination of a fertility rate and work force participation that are among the highest in Europe. We have been able to build a welfare state that benefits women by providing employment opportunities as well as child-care and other services.

I don’t need to tell you that it makes a difference, when women are part of the decision-making process. It is our experience that the participation of women is more than a matter of justice. It improves the quality of politics. It means new issues are brought on the political agenda. A broader range of experiences and values are given a voice. Family policy, child-care and parental leave arrangements make life easier for working women and their children. More attention is paid to mobilising men as fathers to take on their share of family responsibilities. Domestic violence is also being tackled in a more systematic way.

Women increasingly participate in all fields of social and economic life, although often in smaller number than men.Women are well educated - young women are in fact better qualified than their male counterparts. Women are present in all parts of the economy. We want a say not only in “soft” policy areas, but also in the “hard” ones; finance and economics, industry and technology, regional and local planning and development, environmental and resources management. Also in foreign affairs and international co-operation.

It is important to have more women in male dominated professions. The police force is one such area of male dominance. I am sure that all of us present here today agree of the importance to have more women in the police. It is important for many reasons; we need women in higher positions to influence decisions. We also need more women among the operating police force at all levels.

Your presence here demonstrates that change is under way. And it shows the strength and potential of co-operation – locally, regionally and internationally.

The Nordic countries have a strong tradition for co-operation in the field of gender equality. Closeness and similarity in terms of geography, history and culture provide a common basis for joint and parallel actions. Inclusion of the Baltic countries has given a new impetus to Nordic co-operation. Nordic-Baltic co-operation on gender equality has focused on institution-building, development and implementation of gender equality legislation. I wish to mention specifically Nordic-Baltic co-operation and the joint campaign against trafficking in women.

Trafficking in women and children - this increasing and horrifying form of

modern slavery - is another fairly new problem for us. I am sure Rita

Sletner will comment on how we are working to combat this.

But I want to mention one of our results so far; we have established ethical guidelines for government employees on business travel and military personnel posted abroad. The ethical guidelines prohibit the

purchase of sexual services. In this way we wish to encourage “business

with trousers on”!

Another area of great concern is violence and sexual abuse of women; problems that continue to ruin the lives of many women. To combat violence is one of my government’s highest priorities, and this includes special efforts to combat violence against women. Rita Sletner will give you more details.

Gender sensitivity in encounters with the police of exploited and abused women is vital. Being met by a woman police officer may feel more comfortable to a woman who wishes to file a complaint against her violent husband. Likewise for women who are victims of sexual abuse or trafficking, seeking to escape.

We should be aware that gender sensitive attitudes is not something biological, it is learnt socially behaviour. It is a question of knowledge and of attitudes that can be either ignored or actively promoted through police education and work place culture. Promoting the participation of women in the police force is thus an issue of democratic and parity governance, and of good police work.

Cross-border co-operation means we share and get experiences and new ideas. New standards are agreed that each country must strive to live up to. To us who are advocating for women’s rights and gender equality, it gives dearly needed inspiration and support.

Let me conclude. Your success is our success. Globalisation means we mutually depend on each other – we need to support each other and to share experiences. That’s what this conference is about. And why it is so important.

I wish you all possible luck!

Vedlegg / Bakgrunnsinformasjon

Trafficking

The Norwegian Government attaches great importance to prevent trafficking in human beings, to make criminal all aspects of trafficking, and to support and protect the victims. We have this spring launched a cross-sectional plan against trafficking in women and children for sexual exploitation. The aim is to protect and help the victims, prevent trafficking and to punish the organisers. Many NGOs and other organisations have been involved in the process of preparing the plan of action. The NGOs will also have an important role to play in fulfilling the plan. As Norway is a country of destination and a country with high purchasing power, we have a high focus on men as buyers of sex.

Working life:

In Norway, working life is highly sex segregated. Women’s employment rate is not much lower than that of men, but they find themselves in different occupations. Women more frequently work part time and women-dominated occupations tend to be less valued in terms of wages than the male dominated ones. The equal pay gap is one of the major challenges in terms of our gender equality policies.

The pay gap is small when we compare similar jobs in the same occupation and work place, but it widens as women reach higher positions and top management. Women are well educated and have since the 1980s been in a majority among University students. Despite this fact women remain severely under-represented in management and decision-making positions.

This is particularly pronounced in the private sector. Women occupy but 7 per cent of the top positions in private enterprises while 11 percent of middle level managers are women. The percentage of women board members in public limited companies in the private sector in Norway is 8,5 (2003).

Domestic violence

To be threatened and abused by your loved one is felt as a shame, deep shame, for most people. These problems tend to be hidden, private and unseen.

I was rather shocked to learn that a health survey carried out in 1999 among Norwegian women aged 29 to 49 indicated that 10 percent reported that they had been raped by their partner, while five per cent reported that they had been raped by someone other than their partner. Every year approximately 2500 women and 2000 children take refugee in a shelter.

Norway will this year prepare our second plan of action to combat domestic violence. There will be a strengthening of the focus on the male perpetrators, children growing up with family violence and also the specific situation of immigrant women facing domestic violence.

A Government appointed Commission representing NGO’s and different expertise will in October this year submit a review of existing measures and proposals for further action to combat gender based violence. The report will feed into the new Plan of Action.

In our fight against gender based violence we need to revise our thinking. Through 20 years to fight violence against women we have had focus on assisting the victims. We will not do proper progress unless we also focus on men’s behaviour and responsibility as perpetrators. We need to offer violent men an avenue out of the repetitive violent behaviour. Already we have some experience in psychological counselling. More effective punitive measures are also being implemented. Extended restriction orders, similar to what Austria has implemented, aim to avoid that women and children must leave their homes to avoid a violent spouse. (besøksforbud).